Inside the Star

Coroner's inquest found 'a climate of negligence'

On a rainy July afternoon 35 years ago, what was supposed to be a routine safety lecture at the Valcartier army cadet camp north of Quebec City turned into a nightmare for 138 cadets crammed into an improvised classroom when a live grenade exploded, killing six of the teens and wounding 54.

Members of the doomed platoon at Valcartier. Eric Lloyde, in whose hands the grenade exploded, is the light-haired boy on the far right.

By:Robert SmolSPECIAL TO THE STAR, Published on Sun Jul 26 2009

On a rainy July afternoon 35 years ago, what was supposed to be a routine safety lecture at the Valcartier army cadet camp north of Quebec City turned into a nightmare for 138 cadets crammed into an improvised classroom when a live grenade exploded, killing six of the teens and wounding 54.

By the end of the day, those who survived had experienced more violence and death than most adult military personnel see in their entire careers.

"The fellow in front of me was killed. My hearing just went, as I was probably about six feet from the grenade," says Toronto resident Colin Caldwell, 15 at the time.

Lloyde had unknowingly set off a live grenade that had been mixed in with a box of dummy grenades.

For survivors such as Aurora resident Gerry Fostaty, who was the platoon sergeant, the manner in which the cadets were later treated by military authorities remains a hard lesson in the politics of blame and cover-up.

Speaking collectively for the first time in decades, Fostaty and others say there was no attempt to deal with the effects of trauma on the survivors. They were isolated from other cadets and, worse, made to feel the accident had been their fault.

"There should have been an apology for the way we were treated afterwards. We were neglected," Fostaty says. "They just walked away. Once the camp was finished we went to our home units, and the people at our home units had no idea of what was involved."

"I don't recall getting any sort of medical attention," says Montreal native John Hannon, who was 14 at the time. "It was just basically, `Okay, you look good. Move on.' But we had problems with hearing, headaches, and I am sure, in hindsight, that I had a concussion."

"I went through many years of guilt because two kids in my platoon were killed and I had always felt that they were my responsibility and I had failed them," recalls former lieutenant Gary Katzko, the platoon commander. "I don't remember the last time I've had eight hours of sleep."

In the end, a coroner's inquest pointed to a "climate of negligence" and found the regular army captain who conducted the lecture criminally responsible. Yet the only people entitled to compensation for their suffering were the regular and reserve military personnel, a position the Department of National Defence stuck to ever since.

According to Katzko, the lecture was intended to make cadets aware of the danger of discarded explosives and ammunition they might stumble upon in the field during the camping phase of their training.

"The irony was that we did the field training the week before that lecture. So in actual fact there was no need for us to have that lecture," he says.

Such lectures were normally conducted outdoors, but there was bad weather on that day, July 30, 1974, so it was moved into a barrack.

"They took one of the platoon's barracks and all of the bunks were pushed to one end. Then the cadets came and sat cross-legged on the floor and waited for the lecture to begin," says Fostaty.

Jean-Claude Giroux, the army captain conducting the lecture, was in charge of the explosives section at the main base, CFB Valcartier.

According to witnesses, he and his assistant had with them a box containing non-lethal samples of explosives and munitions that cadets might find discarded on the base. Among the samples were blue replicas of the grenades used by the Canadian Forces.

In a statutory declaration to police, obtained recently under the Access to Information Act, Giroux acknowledged that, before the course, he did not verify the contents of the box. He also recalled one cadet asking him if there was any danger of an explosion; he re-assured him there was none.

As the training aids were being distributed among the cadets, some noticed one grenade was a different colour.

"I definitely did see the captain take this grenade out of the box. It caught my attention right away because it was different. He passed it in my direction, which I was supposed to catch, and I looked over the shoulder of the cadet in front of me who caught it and I read the markings `M-61 grenade,' which were in yellow on green," recalls Eric Maura of Montreal, who was 15 at the time.

Hannon remembers questions were raised as the green grenade circulated among the cadets.

"We were told at the very beginning of the lecture that all dummy grenades were blue," he says. "But now this one was green, and so the question was raised a few times in the lecture as it went around the room. Then we had the assurance from the captain that there was no problem. I mean, we were 14-15 years old and what were we supposed to know?"

In his statutory declaration, Capt. Giroux did not mention any such question coming from the cadets. He did, however, recall being asked: If a grenade exploded in this room, would it kill everyone? He also stated that at no moment did he ever circulate a live M-61 grenade among the boys.

The green grenade ended up exploding in the hands of Eric Lloyde.

According to Hannon, it was likely Lloyde's innate curiosity that led to the tragedy.

"Eric was always the guy who wanted to know how things functioned," he says. "So for him being in control of that grenade, he wanted to know how it worked."

Hannon recalls Lloyde pulled the pin out of the grenade while holding the safety lever on the side squeezed in the safe position. Then he replaced the pin. He pulled it out again, this time with the grenade between his legs, the lever out.

The grenade went off.

Ironically, Katzko was debating whether he should signal to Capt. Giroux to wind up the class as they were running late for Padre's Hour.

"They were passing things around, and for young boys that is what interests them," he says. "So I decided I would let it go on for a few more minutes."

Moments later there was a flash, a bang, and smoke filled the room.

"Everything was quiet for about five seconds," Katzko says. "Suddenly everybody was running everywhere ... I couldn't breathe. I had been hit in the abdomen by shrapnel."

Caldwell, only 2 metres behind Lloyde, had become distracted during the lecture. That inattention may have saved his life.

"I got a little bored and one of the fellows had a love letter from his girlfriend. It was being passed around, so I was sort of crouched down reading it when the grenade went off."

Hannon recalls the blast hurtled him "backwards (to the floor) in a cloud of black smoke."

"I was covered head to toe in body parts. We had it all over us," he says, recalling the chaos as boys ran in all directions, not knowing what to do.

Running down the hall from his office, Charles Gutta, a regular army sergeant assigned to the cadet camp that year, was one of the first to enter the smoke-filled room.

"There were two corporals there. They helped me provide first aid. There was a crewman there taking care of one of the cadets, and the blood was coming out of him just like there was a tap open," he says.

Gutta later had to identify Lloyde from the back of his head. "He had nothing left in front of him."

Those cadets well enough to walk were eventually gathered together.

"People were freaking out, running out and running into the woods," says Hannon. "I then remember us being ushered up to the cinema on the upper base and we were seated there, waiting for news."

Isolated from other groups of cadets and from military personnel on the base, the blast survivors were left almost entirely to themselves. They were eventually moved to improvised sleeping quarters in the camp chapel.

"If this would have happened today, there would have been grief counsellors and psychologists there to help you deal with the trauma," says Caldwell. "No one ever approached us and said there was more they could do for you, and we did not think about it on our own."

Within days of the explosion, the Forces set up a board of inquiry made up of senior officers. For the surviving cadets and their instructors, who were marched in for questioning, the priorities of the board's officers became clear.

"They were clearly trying to put the blame on the cadets," says Gutta.

"The first line of questioning to me was: How well do you know your cadets and do you have anything against your cadets? Is this cadet a troublemaker? Would he lie?" says Fostaty. "There was nothing in the questioning about Capt. Giroux at all."

Katzko vividly remembers how, as he awaited his turn, he caught sight of a 14-year-old cadet who had just been questioned.

"This poor kid came out of the room and he was white as a sheet. He was terrified," he says.

"I felt like I was on trial or being a witness to something we may have done," recalls Caldwell. "We probably had the most traumatic experience of our lives and they were treating us like adults, which we were not."

In the end it was determined no cadet was at fault. Rather it was found that negligent storage procedures up at the base resulted in live grenades being mixed up with the dummy grenades.

The coroner's inquiry that came later would blame military authorities for tolerating what reports described as a "climate of negligence and carelessness."

The coroner also found Capt. Giroux criminally responsible. Recent attempts to reach him through the Department of National Defence were not successful.

Training carried on at the cadet camp that summer. Camp authorities gave the cadets not hospitalized after the incident the choice to go home, but none did.

In the years that followed, regular and reserve military personnel involved in the incident were entitled to compensation for physical and psychological injuries suffered at the time or in the aftermath.

But, for the former cadets, it was a different story.

"I was then under the impression that the cadets would get compensation, but these cadets got nothing," says Gutta, the anger still present in his voice. "When the cadet camp closed that year they got on the bus, said their goodbyes, and were put in their parents' care."

Any parents seeking compensation for ongoing medical problems experienced by their sons were required to take the government to court.

According to retired Col. Michel Drapeau, who now practises law in Ottawa, the main obstacle to government compensation rests in the fact that they were not covered by the pension regime as it is today because they were not serving members of the Forces or part of the public service at the time.

Drapeau believes the military, having assumed responsibility for the care and safety of the cadets, clearly assumed a broader legal obligation towards the cadets.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the Canadian Forces has a duty of care to the cadets," he says. "They were sent there under their care, the parents had to give consent for them to be in camp, and they were subject to military instruction."

Yet, according to the Department of National Defence, the military's legal obligation to compensate cadets for personal injuries must be based on a formal request for compensation processed "according to pertinent policy and any other laws and regulations applicable at the relevant time."

"Today, and in general, to compensate an individual, a claim can be made to the Canadian Forces and will be reviewed by the appropriate experts, which is currently called the Claims and Civil Litigation Section," says Karen Johnstone, a spokeswoman for the Department of National Defence.

She says any such review is "subject to the Treasury Board policy on claims and ex gratia (voluntary) payments and any other applicable laws and regulations."

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.